Despite efforts of individual clinicians and institutions to prevent continuing deficiencies in children health care quality; manifold gaps and disparities exist. Refining global standards for child health research compels using Standards for Research (StaR) Child Health program, which addresses the contemporary scarcity of and deficiencies in pediatric clinical trials. StaR Child Health brings together leading international experts devoted to developing practical, evidence-based standards to enrich the reliability and relevance of pediatric clinical research.
The priority issues concerned are consent and recruitment, containing risk of bias, data monitoring committees, determining adequate sample size, selection, measurement, and reporting of outcomes, age groups for pediatric trials, complex interventions, rare diseases' trials and appropriate comparators.
The currently much needed research in children's health may improve if the guidelines developed through StaR Child Health are implemented in practice. So far, representatives of a variety of stakeholder groups, including clinicians, researchers, methodologists, industry partners, regulators, and journal editors participate in various activities of StaR Child Health.
It is no longer ‘too difficult’ to conduct clinical research with children. Research support for children's studies is available in many countries. In many places we now have the support and processes – infrastructure, support units, better methodologies and tools – for best research. When, in practice, one encounters clinical problems that should be researched, it is now time to use these resources, find the relevant help, connect to the local or national child health research network, and take part in improving children's and families' health.

Reference: Chilamakuri S, Nirmala SVSG (2015) StaR –Outlook on Contemporary Research. J Interdiscipl Med Dent Sci 3:173. doi: 10.4172/2376-032X.1000173

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